Fluff Posting in Forums

Forums are great ways to build communities and interact with people who share a similar interest and they are a great way to get help with problems and questions. It also has unfortunately led to an explosion in what has become known as fluff posting. This is the posting of messages from those who have the attitude of what can they get from the community rather than what can they contribute to the community. This kind of posting also includes spam posting.

A lot of the basis for fluff posting is the mistaken belief that forum signatures can be used for link building. Many webmasters just post in forums to drop a link to their website in the signature. Many forums have tried to combat this with requirements that there must be a certain number of posts in the forum before the signature shows up. This has led to the increase in fluff or nonsense posts so the new members can get their post count up to the minimum count. These kind of posts do not contribute anything of value to the community. The more fluff posting, the more likely that the community will decline over time. The spam link droppers are using more and more sneaky tricks to stay under the radar scope.

Forum administrators have to put in strategies to deal with the fluff posting. They have to help dispel the myth that forum signatures are useful for link building. They have to add the nofollow attribute to all external links so the fluff posters and spammer get the message that their links will be of no value. They also have to delete any messages posted in discussion threads that contribute no value to the topic.

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